The present invention relates in general to an earthquake response system, and, more specifically, to emergency management apparatus and methods in a personal automotive vehicle for mitigating harmful effects to the vehicle and its occupants and for assisting in data gathering at a central emergency response center.
Earthquake monitoring is of great interest to public safety and scientific explorations. Traditional detection systems have employed relatively expensive specialized sensing and communication systems. Availability of power and other factors have slowed the widespread deployment of sensing stations. Nevertheless, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are becoming available possessing the ability to detect the onset of an earthquake and quickly spread a warning to other areas before the shocks arrive. It would be desirable to overcome the sparsity of sensing stations in some areas caused by limitations in access to communications and power by providing additional sources of data to fill in the gaps.
When earthquake warnings are broadcast, the forewarning may arrive from about a few seconds to a few minutes before the large earthquake shocks strike. Due to the speed of human reaction times, it would be desirable to provide automatic safety measures to mitigate the effects of an earthquake wherever possible.
Especially in coastal areas where earthquakes are more prevalent, significant numbers of vehicles are typically present on the roads at all hours of the day. Thus, large numbers of people may be affected who are driving (in either conventional or driverless vehicles) during an earthquake. The people might not become aware of an earthquake early warning (EW). Even if they do receive the EW, they might continue driving into damaged or hazardous areas, such as, into a tunnel, over a bridge, or close to a body of water or a high rise building. Furthermore, they might panic and/or not understand the best actions to take or not to take. Following an earthquake, people might be stranded within their vehicles due to vehicle damage or blocked roads. Outside help may be needed if an occupant is injured or not conscious.